The BBC has announced it will cut the role of deputy director general, making current incumbent Mark Byford redundant. Byford took up the post in 2004 and has been at the BBC for 32 years.

Speaking in a release, BBC director general Mark Thompson says:

We have concluded – and Mark fully accepts – that the work he has done to develop our journalism and editorial standards across the BBC has achieved the goals we set to such an extent that the role of deputy director-general can now end, that the post should close at the end of the current financial year, and that Mark himself should be made redundant.

Byford will step down from the corporation’s executive board at the end of March and depart from the BBC in early summer. Helen Boaden. director, BBC News, will join the executive board to represent BBC Journalism in April.